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Historical information survives to give a surprisingly On July 25, 1933 (and coincident with the much-
detailed picture of the young club's personality. Of ballyhooed World Grain Show in Regina), there arrived in
one airplane, Roland Groome, the chief flying Regina the sleek low-wing Northrop Gamma flown by
instructor and manager, said, "I would rather fly than Frank Hawks, who had flown nonstop from New York --
fix it; Jack Wight would rather fix it than fly!" Art then returned several days later in one hop to see his
Brazier, the club's air engineer, bought a kit plane friends, British aviators Jim and Amy Mollison, who had
called a Heath Parasol, not only assembling it, but also been injured in their attempt to cross the Atlantic.
getting it to fly with a converted motorboat engine.
One year later, in mid-July 1934, there flew into the
And finally, Groome began sending out Christmas Regina airport (by that point the only one between
cards with increasingly elaborate photographic
Vancouver and Toronto with paved runways) no fewer
montages of the club's activities.
than ten Martin B-10 bombers on their way from the
On the operational side, new aircraft were added, eastern U.S. to Alaska to "show the flag".
including an Avro Avian with newfangled control rods
instead of the more usual control cables.
One more year later, tragedy struck. In the Avro Avian
Moose Jaw's own airport, located on the site of what's
CF-CDX with unusual control "tubes" rather than cables,
now the federal Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Roland Groome and student Arnold Sym were killed in a
Administration (PFRA) compound on the city's west
crash. A subsequent investigation showed that one of
side, was the site of a gala flying meet on July 5, 1930.
the aileron control rods had become detached -- the
This saw everything from balloon-bursting to tragic accident described at the beginning of this article.
aerobatics, with around 16 aircraft appearing -- a
remarkably large number for such a young industry. An era had ended.
1930 also saw Nellie Carson of Saskatoon set a record The 1934 display by those Martin B-10s was a harbinger
to altitude gained by a woman: of troubled times to come. Around the world,
rearmament was slowly taking place. In Regina, that
took the form of the establishment of an RCAF auxiliary,
or reserve unit, called No. 120 (Bomber) Squadron, with
Tiger Moth and Gypsy Moth aircraft.
When war broke out in 1939, it was mobilized, half its
personnel going to the west coast, where the unit
eventually flew Hudsons, Stranraers and Cansos. The
other half went east for other duties with many different
units.
In Regina, the local flying club received a contract to
operate two flying training schools that officially opened
in February 1940: 15 EFTS, which used Tiger Moths and
In the neighborhood of 16,000 feet -- at which height later Cornells, plus 3 Air Observer School, which flew
she "damned near froze to death it was so cold," Ray Ansons.
says.
